


Pentangular

by catpoop



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galaxy Garrison, Isolation, Keith backstory, Light Angst, M/M, Orphan Keith (Voltron), Pre-Canon, Sad Keith (Voltron), why is that a serious tag goddamnit let him live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 22:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10318091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: Keith's life has always been intrinsically entwined with loss, but it's still something he can't help but fearWhen Keith turns five, he loses his family. Ten, friendship. Fifteen -





	

**Author's Note:**

> heres a nother drabble

Keith is five when the only family member he knows, his father, goes missing without a trace. One night he’s being tucked into bed with the usual bedtime stories and warm hand atop warmer blankets and soft enunciated ‘goodnight’ that precedes the lights switching off and the door clicking closed. And the next day he wakes to find the house empty and the only other bed untouched and the car gone from the garage. He crunches down a bowl of cereal, thinking. Maybe he’ll get a day off school since his father’s gone and the only way he _can_ get to school also gone.

And then one day drags into two into three and Keith starts to realise in misery that maybe meal after meal of cereal and cereal dust in a big house filled with nothing but himself and his thoughts is a little terrifying. He dials nine-one-one and whimpers into the headset and a couple of strangers come to take him away, a couple of action figures in his bag and his knife nestled at the bottom since he remembers how his father always tells him to take care of it.

\------

Keith is ten when his best friend from the orphanage, a pale skinny girl with a talent for skipping stones and throwing rocks so they smash the occasional window or splash into the matron’s cup of tea, is forcibly removed from the institution. ‘Adopted,’ they say. Keith stays sullen and unapproachable for weeks after her departure, wondering what he’s done to deserve parting with his best friend. And since he can count on one finger the number of friends he has at the orphanage, he isolates himself. Understandably.

\------

Five years later, and he’s making his own departure. Not to a generic pair of ‘loving-mum-and-loving-dad,’ but away from one. He’s only been there for half a year, but apparently constantly sneaking up onto the roof to stargaze (and eventually falling asleep, neck stiff and frame shivering) and joyriding on the hoverbike that belongs to _them, not him_ is inexcusable behaviour.

But I just want to go to space, Keith argues, and they remind him of his attendance record at school and dismal grades and sneer.

“You think the likes of you could become an astronaut?”

And it turns out he can, when he finds out one day from the nice lady that owns the bar a ten minutes’ walk away and lets him sleep behind the counter. The _Galaxy Garr’son_. Or something like that. Possibly willing to take in strays like him and educate the uneducated (like him) on the finer details of space travel. Keith bumps his head on the underside of the counter in his joy.

“I’ll have to find a new child squatter to help me clean up around here,” she bemoans, but it’s with pride that she drives him to the Garrison the next weekend and patiently explains Keith’s situation to the man at the front desk.

Somehow, they let him in, but only on the condition that he excels in everything that he does and is perfectly behaved and promises to become a worthy asset to the Garrison.

Keith shrugs. He can do that.

\------

(His departure from the Garrison when he’s eighteen is voluntary. Keith remains pissed off the entire time.)

\------

Suddenly, he’s twenty, and unsurprisingly, little can sway him from superstition or believing in fate or whatever this is –

He tiptoes through the year, hoping this time it’s not getting fired from his job. Or being made to evacuate the shack in the middle of the night because it collapses from a sudden strong gust of wind (it’s never done so, even if the walls do creak).

And then he hears those magic (cursed) words from Shiro’s mouth, when the man is sitting on his couch beside him and nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee.

“I’m leaving. For Pluto.” (Not Pluto, but Kerberos.)

“When? For how long?”

Keith hasn’t heard a rocket launching from the Garrison for more than half a year, at least. They’re bound for another mission eventually.

“End of next month. For … two months?”

“Oh.”

But end of next month is a month away from his birthday. So Shiro won’t be here to celebrate it with him. Keith supposes he should be happy, though, for his friend’s achievement and for whatever exciting discoveries they’ll be making on Kerberos. So he puts on a cheerful face and cracks out the alcohol and pours a shot of whatever-it-is straight into Shiro’s coffee. (He downs it with a grimace.)

“Good luck, then. Don’t miss me too much.”

“It won’t be that long anyway. And thanks.”

Shiro and the rest of the crew go missing two days before his birthday and Keith slams his forehead against the creaky wooden walls and disappears into bed with a heavy stone of acceptance sitting in his stomach.

\------

(Shiro reappears in half a year and Keith shakes his head in mute disbelief.)

(Voltron is five lions combined and he can’t fight the irrational fear that comes with multiples of five and then –)

(And then Shiro disappears again and cuts their numbers down to four and the exhale that Keith releases is either a shadow of the past or something worse.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanss for reading
> 
> \---  
> @swummeng-geys.tumblr.com


End file.
